Comments on: Business Models for Internet Start-ups http://blog.tonyconfrey.net/2007/10/01/business-models-for-internet-start-ups/ Tonys blog on tonyconfrey.net Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:23:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Tony http://blog.tonyconfrey.net/2007/10/01/business-models-for-internet-start-ups/#comment-8 Tony Sat, 20 Oct 2007 16:22:44 +0000 http://blog.tonyconfrey.net/2007/10/01/business-models-for-internet-start-ups/#comment-8 In response to Dharmesh, I should say that I totally agree. The challenge is all about both being in the whitespace and building a compelling application that gets some attention. As a minor follow up to the rough order of magnitude numbers I used its worth noting that on the negative side a recent post at TechCrunch implied that they get upwards of a dozen solicitations a day. So maybe my 1-2 new business's per day estimate is off by an order of magnitude. On the positive side Balmer at Microsoft is claiming that they will ramp up acquisitions to 20 companies a year ( <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/18/microsofts-ballmer-msft-will-acquire-20-companies-a-year/" rel="nofollow">http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/18/microsofts-ballmer-msft-will-acquire-20-companies-a-year/</a> ), so thats one or two a month just by MS... -Tony In response to Dharmesh, I should say that I totally agree. The challenge is all about both being in the whitespace and building a compelling application that gets some attention.

As a minor follow up to the rough order of magnitude numbers I used its worth noting that on the negative side a recent post at TechCrunch implied that they get upwards of a dozen solicitations a day. So maybe my 1-2 new business’s per day estimate is off by an order of magnitude. On the positive side Balmer at Microsoft is claiming that they will ramp up acquisitions to 20 companies a year ( http://venturebeat.com/2007/10/18/microsofts-ballmer-msft-will-acquire-20-companies-a-year/ ), so thats one or two a month just by MS…
-Tony

]]> By: Lars http://blog.tonyconfrey.net/2007/10/01/business-models-for-internet-start-ups/#comment-4 Lars Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:09:04 +0000 http://blog.tonyconfrey.net/2007/10/01/business-models-for-internet-start-ups/#comment-4 Hi Tony: I just stumbled across your site and thought I'd take a minute to point-out what might have been a good example for the SNS panel folks to mention. While I could try to explain by text here it would be easier to have a quick read of the free .pdf at link below about a Japanese mobile-only SNS play called Mobagatown: http://wirelesswatch.jp/mobile-sns/ http://wirelesswatch.jp/docs/mobage_reportcontents.pdf As you had mentioned earlier (to paraphrase), "creating a value proposition and figuring out the business model" seems to be the focus.. this is certainly a working example! kind regards, Lars Hi Tony:

I just stumbled across your site and thought I’d take a minute to point-out what might have been a good example for the SNS panel folks to mention.

While I could try to explain by text here it would be easier to have a quick read of the free .pdf at link below about a Japanese mobile-only SNS play called Mobagatown:
http://wirelesswatch.jp/mobile-sns/
http://wirelesswatch.jp/docs/mobage_reportcontents.pdf

As you had mentioned earlier (to paraphrase), “creating a value proposition and figuring out the business model” seems to be the focus.. this is certainly a working example!

kind regards,

Lars

]]> By: Dharmesh Shah http://blog.tonyconfrey.net/2007/10/01/business-models-for-internet-start-ups/#comment-3 Dharmesh Shah Tue, 02 Oct 2007 04:07:01 +0000 http://blog.tonyconfrey.net/2007/10/01/business-models-for-internet-start-ups/#comment-3 Great article. One big challenge with the "we will sell to one of the big guys" is that we don't have a sense of how many others are thinking exactly the same thing and doing something very, very similar. You really end up betting on your ability to predict where the market is headed in the future (i.e. what the big guys will be interested in). If you bet on the present -- i.e. competing in a category that you already know is interesting, the odds are you'll be duking it out with several others. If you look at the acquisition patterns, it seems that those that got bought (FeedBurner, MyBlogLog, etc.) were relatively differentiated at the time they started. Great article.

One big challenge with the “we will sell to one of the big guys” is that we don’t have a sense of how many others are thinking exactly the same thing and doing something very, very similar.

You really end up betting on your ability to predict where the market is headed in the future (i.e. what the big guys will be interested in). If you bet on the present — i.e. competing in a category that you already know is interesting, the odds are you’ll be duking it out with several others.

If you look at the acquisition patterns, it seems that those that got bought (FeedBurner, MyBlogLog, etc.) were relatively differentiated at the time they started.

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